I test more than a dozen coffee makers a year here at TechRadar, and De’Longhi’s espresso machines are consistently among the best. If you’re looking for a new machine to grace your kitchen, the brand has something for every budget, all equally well designed and built. You can’t go wrong with any of them, but if you’re overwhelmed by the sheer number of options available, I’ve put together this shortlist of my three favorites.
All of these machines were released within the past year, so you can be sure you’re getting all the latest features – including cold extraction, which was the biggest trend in home coffee makers in 2026. This capability bypasses your coffee machine’s boiler and pumps water straight from the tank over your freshly ground coffee for a smoother taste, similar to coffee that has been steeped overnight in the fridge. It’s great as a base for iced lattes and americanos, espresso martinis, or desserts such as affogato.
Best budget
De’Longhi Dedica Duo
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De’Longhi has released some truly excellent coffee makers this year (in fact, it earned the prize for Home Brand of the Year in the TechRadar Choice Awards), and the Dedica Duo is a prime example. It’s a compact manual espresso machine that arrives with a reasonable price tag, yet far outstrips others in the same price bracket.
Most budget-friendly espresso machines I’ve tested offer poor quality, and are unable to maintain the constant temperature and pressure necessary to make reliably good espresso. After testing a few similarly priced machines from a lesser brand, I was questioning my ability to even make a basic latte… until the Dedica Duo restored my faith in my own abilities.
It’s a truly excellent little espresso machine – and once you’ve worked out the correct grind size for your coffee, you can trust it to deliver delicious results time after time. Its steam wand is particularly good, and despite the Duo’s small boiler, it sustains plenty of pressure for you to create perfect microfoam for cappuccinos and lattes.
There’s even a cold extraction mode for those occasions when you’re craving an iced coffee and don’t want to wait 24 hours for it to infuse in the fridge. Some espresso machines I’ve tested recently ask you to prepare a cup of ice and then dump a shot of hot coffee over the top, but the Duo uses cold water direct from the tank, pulsing it slowly through your ground coffee over the course of two minutes.
If the Dedica Duo is beyond your budget, take a look at its predecessor, the De’Longhi Dedica Style. It doesn’t have the Duo’s cold brew mode, plus the design is slightly less convenient – we found it hard to fit two espresso cups on its small drip tray – but you can often pick it up for a third off the RRP.
Read my full De’Longhi Dedica Duo review
Best mid-range
De’Longhi La Specialista Touch
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The De’Longhi La Specialista Touch is a superb semi-automatic espresso machine that doesn’t just make delicious coffee with perfectly foamed milk – it also teaches you how to do it yourself, and helps you understand the effects of making even small changes to the flavor of your finished drinks.
It starts off by introducing the importance of grind size. Enter the type of coffee bean you’re using (arabica or robusta, and the darkness of the roast) and it will estimate an appropriate grind size for you, and dispense the ground coffee into the portafilter handle. If there’s too little (which might happen if the grind size is quite fine) then it will suggest dispensing a bit more to get a suitable dose. If the filter is too full, the machine will prompt you to remove a little with the trimming tool provided. Either way, it will adjust its own settings and save the correct dosage for next time.
You’ll then tamp the coffee using the spring-loaded “calibrated” tamper, which is designed to apply just the right amount of pressure, and do so evenly to create a neat puck of coffee with no cracks. Insert the handle into the machine as instructed (you’ll be guided through every step) and tap a button to begin pulling your shot. The machine will time how long this takes, and recommend adjusting the grind size if it’s too fast or slow. You’re also encouraged to taste the espresso to see what you think, even if it’s likely to be a little over- or under-extracted.
Finally, you can either foam the milk yourself (the machine comes with an excellent steam wand), or use the automatic steaming system and let the La Specialista Touch do the work.
During testing, I wasn’t the biggest fan of the spring-loaded tamper (I’m used to tamping coffee with an ordinary one); but you can just swap it out for an ordinary one, as I did, with the machine otherwise hard to fault. This is a coffee maker that will grow with you as you develop your coffee-making skills, and it comes highly recommended.
Read my full De’Longhi La Specialista Touch review
Best premium
De’Longhi Primadonna Aromatic
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If you’re looking for a fully automatic espresso machine – one that will do all the work for you and prepare perfect drinks at the tap of a button – may I recommend the De’Longhi Primadonna Aromatic. It’s easily one of the best automatic coffee makers I’ve tested this year, and a lot of fun to use too.
It produces consistently well-extracted espresso and creamy milk foam (either hot or cold), as you’d expect for a machine in this price bracket. However, what impressed me most about the Primadonna Aromatic was its ability to “learn” what you like to drink at what time of day, and push those options to the top of its extensive drinks menu, so you don’t have to flick through to find your favorites. It also saves your preferences (it supports up to four user profiles), so you don’t have to tweak the settings each time – and there’s no risk of another member of your household overwriting your preferred latte options.
It’s definitely a big machine (there wasn’t much clearance to open the bean hopper when it was underneath my kitchen cabinets), but it looks stylish and its five-inch touchscreen is bright and easy to navigate.
Like all the De’Longhi coffee makers in this roundup, the Primadonna Aromatic can brew hot and cold espresso (and very tasty they are too) – but, unlike the others, it can also produce chilled milk foam using a dedicated carafe with a special nozzle. It worked brilliantly in my tests, with both dairy and plant milk (I do love a good iced latte macchiato), and you can store the carafe in the fridge between uses.
This is definitely a premium espresso machine with a price tag to match, but the cost has dropped a little since I first reviewed it in June, making it a more tempting proposition. If your budget will stretch to it, you won’t be disappointed.
Read my full De’Longhi Primadonna Aromatic review
The best coffee makers you can buy
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